The karma bone's connected to the ---

WELL. Karma was delivered today in the form of a senior Bikram instructor from Boston, the same one whose clinic Bettina, Catherine and I attended a month ago on the island. It was a great joy to see her again, and to hear her evaluations during our posture clinic. I had mentioned previously that a woman in my study group had avoided delivering the full Awkward pose that everyone else delivered, which irritated me greatly at the time. However, I decided I didn't want to get the Yoga Cop label, so shut the hell up. Today this woman had to deliver Standing Head to Knee, which was one colossal botch from the first sentence. The Boston instructor cut her short, dismissed the demonstrators, and commanded the woman to perform the posture while speaking the text. "Yeah, buts" and "If I could justs" were waved off brusquely. "DO IT," was the command.
 
It was disastrous, but the instructor took no pity on the woman. Her assignment was to learn the dialogue kinesthetically -- while walking or while holding the posture.
 
What set the instructor off from other yogis was that she assured the woman that she would make a fine teacher once she accepted that she was going to have to deliver the dialogue verbatim. I don't know if I could have summoned the same kindness in her place. Still a good ways off from enlightenment, me.
 
And a bit of a ways off from a perfect test score in Anatomy. The 30 questions were perfectly straightforward and had been fully covered in the Study Guide. But still: I flopped on an easy bone marrow question. I'm fairly sure I passed the 70% mark, though. Will this be enough to endear me to the heart of Dr. Preddy? I asked no show-offy questions tonight, although I was greatly tempted by the epiglottis review. No matter -- I'll admire from afar. Doc, you're aces.